Yesterday, myself and one of my classmates drove a couple hours to Albany , NY to look for some interiors to shoot after being tipped off by one of the instructors that there were a lot of interesting buildings there. Little did we know that these interesting buildings were all government buildings and high security areas. That meant no photographs of anything inside. So what do we do instead? We did what any photographer with time to waste would do. Find out after the jump.

We stood over an overpass and shot pictures of the highway. In my last post I talked about doing tilt shift shots with a regular lens. And thats what I did in these shots. I think they worked out a little better than my experimenting in my apartment. I’ll also post some architecture shots I took while there as well.

So, every since I came across Vince Laforet’s (vincentlaforet.com) work I’ve been infactuated with the whole tilt shift look. The tilt shift lenses for Canon are not very cheap to come by, so some of my friends have been playing around with breaking their lenses off the camera and tilting it themselves. Continue after the jump to see what I’ve done just messing around myself. I started doing a lot of reading on figuring out the differences between a lens baby and the tilt-shift lens, and the big difference is that the lens baby changes the sweet spot for focus while the tilt shift changes the actual plane of focus. Anyway until I can afford to buy an actual lens from Canon, I’ll be experimenting with the technique of breaking the lens off the camera more. Here’s a shot I got just playing around next to my computer with my 50mm f/1.8 lens.

For all my people that regularly browse my blog, be on the lookout for my brand new website coming in the next few weeks. I feel like this change signify a new beginning and a new step in my professional career. I feel as though I am transcending to the next level with my photography, and will be looking to make the same progress with everything else in my life. When the new site is up, I’ll be making a post about it for sure.

So I shot some architectural interior shots today for my final portfolio. I was shooting at Smith College, got half way through, and had someone come up and started questioning me….Read the rest, and see some photos after the jump.

She asked me if I had permission, and even though I told her I did, she still told me I had to finish up because of some gibberish she was talking about. There were students walkin around everywhere anyway, so it may not have been the best day to be there. Despite that I still got a few clean shots. Here’s one of my favorites. I really love the skylight they have built into this building. Shout out to Andy Bardon for putting me on this place, its really nice.

I hope everyone likes the new blog design. The more and more people that sign up for blogspot accounts, the more and more I felt compelled to create one that had more of a unique feel. Also notice the new URL: http://marcussmithblog.com.

A couple other new features added are the buttons on the right linking you to follow me on twitter, watch my behind the scenes videos, and friend request me on facebook. Hope ya dig the new layout.

Big thanks to Emily, Matt, Debra, Jaime, and John for all the hard work they did on this shoot as well. Leave your comments please!!!!

Tonight, at 8PM (CST), 9PM (EST) I will be releasing the stills from “Out of the Past”. It is a fashion story inspired by the film noir era of Hollywood. The attire for our femme fatale, Emily, ranges from party dress to evening gown to seductive lingerie. Also, this spread is actually named after the film “Out of the Past” which was released in 1947, if you’re into old detective and crime films you should definitely check it out on a boring night in. Please Please Please leave your comments, I would love to see them!